Research Progress on Low Damage Grasping of Fruit, Vegetable and Meat Raw Materials

The sorting and processing of food raw materials is an important step in the food production process, and the quality of the sorting operation can directly or indirectly affect the quality of the product. In order to improve production efficiency and reduce damage to food raw materials, some food production enterprises currently use robots for sorting operations of food raw materials. In the process of robot grasping, some food raw materials such as fruits, vegetables and meat have a soft appearance, complex and changeable shape, and are easily damaged by the robot gripper. Therefore, higher requirements have been put forward for robot grippers, and the research and development of robot grippers that can reduce damage to food raw materials and ensure stable grasping has been a major focus. In addition, in order to grasp food raw materials with various shapes and sizes with low damage, a variety of sensors and control strategies are required. Based on this, this paper summarizes the low damage grasp principle and characteristics of electric grippers, pneumatic grippers, vacuum grippers and magnetic grippers used in automated sorting production lines of fruit, vegetable and meat products, as well as gripper design methods to reduce grasp damage. Then, a grasping control strategy based on visual sensors and tactile sensors was introduced. Finally, the challenges and potential future trends faced by food robot grippers were summarized.